Standard Life’s Wrap platform Investment Hub breaks £4bn mark in just three years

14 June 2017

Investment Hub celebrates third birthday with over £4bn AUA

76 discretionary managers offering more than 500 portfolio strategies

£642m net investments in Q1 2017

Standard Life today announces its Investment Hub has broken through the £4bn milestone as it celebrates its third birthday. The Hub supports the increasing need for advisers and their discretionary managers to work in close harmony to deliver the best outcomes to their clients. This is made possible by unifying the custody of investment assets and tax wrappers, allowing multiple portfolios to be run within and across tax wrappers. This provides advisers with real time visibility and reporting of portfolio holdings.

With access to 76 highly rated discretionary managers – growing from just seven at the time of launch - the flexible configuration of the Hub allows advisers to better reflect the increasingly complicated requirements of those clients who are approaching or in retirement.

Adviser benefits

Maximum flexibility – makes it easy to combine advisory models, discretionary portfolios and multi-asset fund strategies; portfolios run across multiple tax wrappers; and multiple portfolios within a single tax wrapper

Supports retirement income risk-management strategies – enables rebalancing between portfolio strategies as well as within them (de-risking short-term income needs); can generate client income from aggregate growth or restrict to dividends and yields for capital unit preservation

David Tiller, Standard Life’s Head of Adviser and Wealth Manager Propositions, said: “The support for our Wrap discretionary Investment Hub is outstanding, with assets now exceeding some platforms in the market. I am convinced that this success is all about advisers and discretionary managers’ focus on the client, with the Hub enabling much closer coordination of financial planning and investment activities than was previously possible.

“In order to meet the needs of the new retirement market, advisers are demanding more from their platform. They are looking for fund houses, in-house administrators, and third party discretionary managers to be able to match specific mandates aligned to different client goals and for platforms to enable these to be combined as part of an overall client plan. The architecture underpinning our Wrap and Hub investment capabilities makes this a uniquely straightforward exercise.”

Tony Allan, Partner and Head of Business Development at LGT Vestra, said: “The Investment Hub is intuitive, easy to use and has clearly been designed with a real understanding of the needs of discretionary managers and advisers. The closer the alignment between advisers and their selected discretionary managers, the better the outcome, whether in terms of minimising the tax burden, or maximising growth or income potential. The Hub is a great example of how well-considered technology not only delivers efficiencies but can actually enable better client outcomes.”

Notes to Editors

Standard Life was established in Edinburgh in 1825. Today it is a global investment company helping people to invest and manage their money.

Around 4.5 million customers and clients across 45 countries trust Standard Life with their financial future and Standard Life is responsible for the administration of over £360 billion of their assets. Standard Life also supports over 25 million customers through Indian and Chinese associate and joint venture businesses.

Standard Life Investments actively manages £278billion worldwide, offering global asset management expertise with strong investment capabilities and performance.Standard Life employs around 6,300 people internationally – through businesses in the UK, Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.

Standard Life plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange with around 1.2 million individual shareholders.

Wherever Standard Life operates in the world, it is motivated by a sense of responsibility. That is what has helped it be a sustainable business over the long term. Standard Life is proud to be listed as a leader for corporate sustainability in its industry in the Dow Jones Sustainability™ Indices (DJSI World and DJSI Europe).

You can follow Standard Life on www.twitter.com/StandardLifeplc

About Standard Life Platforms

Elevate and Standard Life Wrap is used by over 3,000 financial advice and wealth management firms and serves over 360,000 customers.

Total Standard Life platform assets under administration are over £47 billion including record net inflows of £1.9 billion in quarter one 2017.

The ‘Superclean’ share classes for Architas funds are available on Elevate and Standard Life Wrap.

The Elevate platform was voted “Best Platform Provider (AUM up to £15 billion)” by advisers at the UK Platform Awards 2016 for the second year in a row and the “Best Platform for Adviser Service”. For the third year in a row, Standard Life Wrap was voted “Best Platform Provider (AUM over £12.5 billion in 2014 and 2015, and AUM over £15 billion in 2016)” by the adviser community at the prestigious UK Platform Awards 2016.

For more information about Elevate visit www.elevateplatform.co.ukAdviserzone is Standard Life’s dedicated extranet site for UK financial advisers. Visit www.adviserzone.com for more details.